Maize growers are playing a waiting game regarding their planting intentions for this spring after a difficult past season marred by low prices and falling demand.
Waikato Federated Farmers arable chair Don Stobie described those intentions as “the $64,000 question”.
“A lot of them are stepping back and having a deep think about what they are going to do going forward. A lot of growers at the moment are saying they are going to reduce their planting intentions for the coming season.
“The other thing they are talking about is any ground they do plant, they are wanting a contract on for the crop.”
This will give them surety of price at harvest time because so many got badly burned last season from the low price and lack of demand, he said.
Corson Maize national business manager Graeme Austin described the silage industry as static and the grain industry as hesitant.
“There are a whole lot of things happening, they are not sure about contract prices yet, so end users haven’t committed to contract amounts and growers are waiting to hear what contract prices will be.”
The other issue at play is the shortage of natural gas, which companies such as Vittera use to fuel their maize grain dryers, he said.
The contracts these companies for gas have ceased, meaning they will have to purchase the gas on the open market.
“The likelihood is there will be gas available, but we don’t know what the price will be.”
Stobie said the early spring will have little impact on planting dates as farmers are wary of an early spring cold snap that could affect a freshly planted or emerging crop.
“Growers will be wanting some surety that someone is going to want their crop later on. I wouldn’t envisage that there will be many people growing without a contract this season.”
One positive for the maize growers is they could benefit from Fonterra and Nestlé’s push to reduce Scope 3 emissions, he said.
“Maize grain has a very good emission intensity rating compared to palm kernel and currently we import around 2 million tonnes of palm kernel into New Zealand. If they reduced that by even 10%, that would be potentially 20,000t of grain farmers could swap to using.”
